During the late 1870s the flying clouds caused terror all over the world. In parts of Minnesota where the locusts landed they covered the ground three inches thick. Crops were destroyed throughout the prairie states.
The most remarkable incident was reported from Russia in 1878:
“A detachment of Gen. Lazeroff’s expedition against the Turcomans met with a curious misadventure near the Georgian town of Elizavetopol. A few versts from the town the soldiers encountered an army of locusts about 20 miles long and broad in proportion. The officer in charge did not like to turn back, repelled by mere insects. The soldiers soon were surrounded. The locusts appear to have mistaken them for trees and swarmed by the thousands around them—crawling over their bodies, lodging themselves in their helmets, penetrating their clothes and knapsacks, filling the barrels of their rifles and boring into their ears and noses.
“The commander gave the order for the troops to push on the double-quick for Elizavetopol, but the road was so blocked that the soldiers became frightened and, after they wavered a few minutes, a stampede took place. Led by a non-commissioned officer who had espied a village a short way from the road, the troops dashed across the fields, slipping about on the crushed and greasy bodies as if on ice. They were detained prisoners by the insects for 45 hours, and on the way to Elizavetopol found every blade of grass and green leaf destroyed.”
That same year a cross-continental train was held up for three hours near Reno, Nevada, by a host of locusts that covered the rails for several miles.
Trees Can Grow Smaller
Trees change size from hour to hour. The circumference of a tree trunk gets bigger and smaller with unpredictable perversity. For light on this phenomenon the world is indebted to Dr. John A. Small of Rutgers University.
About a decade ago tree scientists were provided with an instrument which could measure continuously the radial growth of a tree with an accuracy of a thousandth of an inch. With such an instrument it seemed plausible that it would be possible to tell just how much a tree had grown in a single day and its rates of growth in different seasons. A lot of the conclusions reached in this connection must now be discarded. The circumference of a tree certainly changes but not in a straight line. It may be bigger one day, smaller the next.
Dr. Small’s experiments were carried out with the white ash. He found that circumference changes followed yearly, monthly and even daily rhythms but the changes in the same tree might vary by as much as 200 percent when measurements were made at different times. Daily variations have shown a tendency to reach maximum readings about 6:30 a.m. and sink to minimum in the late afternoon or early evening. Eccentric jumps and drops can be found almost any time.